SoylentNews

upstart writes:

Milkweed butterflies tear open caterpillars and drink them alive:

Not all caterpillars grow up to be beautiful butterflies. Some become living milkshakes for their dads, who guzzle caterpillar body fluids to attract the ladies.

Recently, scientists reported the first evidence of butterflies sipping from the bodies of caterpillars — dead and alive. They observed adult milkweed butterflies in North Sulawesi, Indonesia, using tiny claws on their feet to scratch wounds in caterpillars' bodies so they could lap the liquid that oozed out.

Male butterflies seek certain compounds produced by milkweed (flowering plants in the family Apocynaceae), which repel predators and help the butterflies produce pheromones that attract females. Since caterpillars are stuffed with juices from chewed-up plants, they make an easy target for butterflies looking to chemically boost their attractiveness to females.

[...] "The caterpillar larvae would contort their bodies rapidly in what appeared to be futile attempts to deter the persistent scratching of adults," said the researchers who observed the butterfly baby-drinking. They described their observations in a study published Sept. 8 in the journal Ecology.

Butterflies in the Danainae family are known as milkweed butterflies because most of the caterpillars in this group feed on milkweed plants, which contain toxic alkaloids that are absorbed by the caterpillars and then processed into useful chemicals that protect them from predators. Another use for these alkaloids is in mating pheromones, which are transferred to females in the males' sperm packet "as a nuptial gift," the scientists wrote.

Journal Reference:
Yi-Kai Tea, Jonathan Soong Wei, Ethan P. Beaver, et al. Kleptopharmacophagy? Milkweed butterflies scratch and imbibe from Apocynaceae‐feeding caterpillars, Ecology (DOI: 10.1002/ecy.3532)

Original Submission

Apple Warns Against Mounting iPhones to Motorcycles

upstart writes:

Apple warns against mounting iPhones to motorcycles:

This has gotta be one of the weirdest ways you can ruin an iPhone camera.

Apple posted a new page to its support website warning iPhone owners to be careful about exposing their phones to the specific vibration frequencies found in "high-power or high-volume motorcycle engine." News of the support page first popped up in a report from MacRumors.

Apparently, operating these phones too close to those engines can fry the cameras in iPhones with optical image stabilization (OIS) or closed-loop autofocus (AF) technology. Every iPhone from the 7 onward has at least one of those things inside it, so if you've bought an iPhone in the past four or five years, it could potentially be at risk.

Exposure to Vibrations, Like Those Generated by High-powered Motorcycle Engines, Might Impact iPhone

upstart writes:

Tesla Model S Plaid sets the production EV 'Ring record at 7:35.579:

Tesla's new tri-motor technological terror -- the Model S Plaid -- finally got its day at Germany's famed and feared Nurburgring Nordschleife. It managed to set the official production electric vehicle record while it was there -- even with that goofy steering yoke.

Elon Musk announced the record on his Twitter account on Thursday, and while the sheet of paper he posted shows two times, the official time that Nurburgring officials count is the slower of the two at 7:35.579, rather than 7:30.909.

Tesla posted a video of the run on Friday, and the Nurburgring posted the same video, but with onscreen telemetry. While neither of them looks (or sounds) very fast, that's kind of the reality of modern cars, especially modern electric cars.

Watch it on YouTube

(I count myself fortunate to have driven a lap around the Grand Prix section of the Nürburgring in September 1997 when I was working on a project for FIA. Fun times! --martyb).

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Good news for tuna as they bounce back from the brink of extinction:

There’s good news for the tuna you’re used to seeing in supermarkets, like Atlantic and Southern bluefin. These and two other species are showing signs of recovery from overfishing.

They have been hunted by commercial fishing companies for decades but now it’s hoped they might not go extinct, as previously feared.

The news comes from International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) which has just released an update to its Red List.

This list shows the extinction risk of thousands of species around the world. Unfortunately, more than 38,000 species are still facing the threat of extinction, but there were signs of recovery for some.

In 2011, most species of tuna were considered to be at serious risk of extinction. With 6 million tonnes[*] thought to have been caught in 2019, these are some of the most commercially valuable fish in the world.

In this update, the status of seven commonly fished tuna species was reassessed and there was good news for four of them.

owl writes:

A Laser Fired Through a Keyhole Can Expose Everything Inside a Room:

Being able to see inside a closed room was a skill once reserved for super heroes. But researchers at the Stanford Computational Imaging Lab have expanded on a technique called non-line-of-sight imaging so that just a single point of laser light entering a room can be used to see what physical objects might be inside.

Non-line-of-sight (NLOS, for short) imaging is by no means a new idea. It’s a clever technique that’s been refined in research labs over the years to create cameras that can remarkably see around corners and generate images of objects that otherwise aren’t in the camera’s field of view, or are blocked by a series of obstacles. Previously, the technique has leveraged flat surfaces like floors or walls that are in the line of sight of both the camera and the obstructed object. A series of light pulses originating from the camera, usually from lasers, bounce off these surfaces and then bounce off the hidden object before eventually making their way back to the camera’s sensors. Algorithms then use the information about how long it took these reflections to return to generate an image of what the camera can’t see. The results aren’t high resolution, but they’re usually detailed enough to easily determine what the object in question is.

The first link in the story is to a 3m39s YouTube video demonstrating the process in operation.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

While fastidiously avoiding use of the F-word [i.e. freedom], the European Commission has published a very long report on the impact of open source software and hardware on technological independence, competitiveness and innovation in the EU economy. Open hardware is also covered.

This study analyses the economic impact of Open Source Software (OSS) and Hardware (OSH) on the European economy. It was commissioned by the European Commission's DG CONNECT.

It is estimated that companies located in the EU invested around €1 billion in OSS in 2018, which resulted in an impact on the European economy of between €65 and €95 billion. The analysis estimates a cost-benefit ratio of above 1:4 and predicts that an increase of 10% of OSS contributions would annually generate an additional 0.4% to 0.6% GDP as well as more than 600 additional ICT start-ups in the EU. Case studies reveal that by procuring OSS instead of proprietary software, the public sector could reduce the total cost of ownership, avoid vendor lock-in and thus increase its digital autonomy. The study also contains an analysis of existing public policy actions in Europe and around the world.

Back in 2006, Rishab Aiyer Ghosh prepared a similar report for UNU-MERIT, Study on the effect on the development of the information society of European public bodies making their own software available as open source, in The Netherlands.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Massive new animal species discovered in half-billion-year-old Burgess Shale:

Palaeontologists at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) have uncovered the remains of a huge new fossil species belonging to an extinct animal group in half-a-billion-year-old Cambrian rocks from Kootenay National Park in the Canadian Rockies. The findings were announced on September 8, 2021, in a study published in Royal Society Open Science.

Named Titanokorys gainesi, this new species is remarkable for its size. With an estimated total length of half a meter, Titanokorys was a giant compared to most animals that lived in the seas at that time, most of which barely reached the size of a pinky finger.

"The sheer size of this animal is absolutely mind-boggling, this is one of the biggest animals from the Cambrian period ever found," says Jean-Bernard Caron, ROM's Richard M. Ivey Curator of Invertebrate Palaeontology.

Evolutionarily speaking, Titanokorys belongs to a group of primitive arthropods called radiodonts. The most iconic representative of this group is the streamlined predator Anomalocaris, which may itself have approached a meter in length. Like all radiodonts, Titanokorys had multifaceted eyes, a pineapple slice-shaped, tooth-lined mouth, a pair of spiny claws below its head to capture prey and a body with a series of flaps for swimming. Within this group, some species also possessed large, conspicuous head carapaces, with Titanokorys being one of the largest ever known.

Journal Reference:
J.-B. Caron, J. Moysiuk. A giant nektobenthic radiodont from the Burgess Shale and the significance of hurdiid carapace diversity, Royal Society Open Science (DOI: 10.1098/rsos.210664)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Scientists reveal how tabby cats get their distinctive stripes:

As any cat owner can tell you, cats don't give up their secrets easily. But a new study, published Tuesday in the science journal Nature Communications, delves into a long-held kitty mystery: How exactly does a tabby cat's genes make those striking stripe patterns in its fur?

"Tabby" isn't a breed; it's a distinct fur pattern common among cats. Tabby cats often have what looks like a letter "M" on their foreheads, plus bold stripes of varying design in their fur. The tabbys have made their mark on pop culture, too. Morris the 9Lives cat food mascot is an orange tabby, as are cartoon cats Garfield and Heathcliff.

In the new study, conducted by scientists affiliated with Alabama's HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology and the Stanford University School of Medicine, 200 litters of nonviable embryos were examined, delving into the mystery of how patterns emerge in a developing cat.

[...] It all may seem like more than you wanted to know about your favorite feline, but the study notes that "understanding the basis of the animal color pattern is a question of longstanding interest for developmental and evolutionary biology."

Journal Reference:
Kaelin, Christopher B., McGowan, Kelly A., Barsh, Gregory S.. Developmental genetics of color pattern establishment in cats [open], Nature Communications (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-25348-2)

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

If you have devices out in the field, you probably want to connect with them. There was a time when that was hard to do, requiring telephone wires or specialized radio gear. Now cellular data is prevalent, but even cellular isn’t everywhere. If you have the cash, you can pay a number of satellite companies to carry your data, but that’s generally pricey and has its own challenges.

The age of satellite constellations is changing that. Of course everyone by now has heard of Starlink which is offering satellite internet via numerous satellites that are much smaller than traditional telecom satellites. But they’re not the only came[sic] in town.

A company called Swarm has put up a constellation of 1/4U cube satellites in low orbits. They offer a ground station that uses an omni antenna and a subscription access program for small amounts of data. They sent us a unit to review, and while I haven’t used the system in a real project yet, the kit was pretty impressive.

The Swarm “tile” is a tiny radio that can talk bi-directionally with small satellites in low Earth orbit. The little unit is made to mount on a PCB, can control its power consumption, and talks to your system via a standard 3.3V UART connection. It does, however, require a small antenna and maybe even a smaller antenna for its GPS module. Small, in this case, is about a mid-size handy talkie antenna. There is a half-wave antenna that doesn’t need a ground plane and a shorter antenna that does need a ground plane.

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. These were "a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks [...] against the United States of America on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001."

Of the 2,977 people who died, 2,605 were U.S. citizens and 372 non-U.S. citizens (excluding the 19 perpetrators). More than 90 countries lost citizens in the attacks, including the United Kingdom (67 deaths), the Dominican Republic (47 deaths), India (41 deaths), Greece (39 deaths), South Korea (28 deaths), Canada (24 deaths), Japan (24 deaths), Colombia (18 deaths), Jamaica (16 deaths), Philippines (16 deaths), Mexico (15 deaths), Trinidad and Tobago (14 deaths), Ecuador (13 deaths), Australia (11 deaths), Germany (11 deaths), Italy (10 deaths), Bangladesh (6 deaths), Ireland (6 deaths), Pakistan (6 deaths), and Poland (6 deaths).

It was a tragedy not only for America, but for the world.

Freeman writes:

Our flexible processors can now use bendable RAM:

A few months ago, we brought news of a bendable CPU, termed Plastic ARM, that was built of amorphous silicon on a flexible substrate. The use cases for something like this are extremely low-powered devices that can be embedded in clothing or slapped on the surface of irregular objects, allowing them to have a small amount of autonomous computing. But to meet the low power requirements, a minimalist processor is not enough—all the components have to sip power as well. And that makes for a poor fit for traditional RAM technology, which needs power to maintain the state of the memory.

But a group from Stanford now has that covered. The researchers have built a form of flexible phase-change memory, which is closer in speed to normal RAM than flash memory but requires no power to maintain its state. And, while their work was initially focused on getting something that's flexible to work, the principles they uncovered during their work should apply to phase-change memory in general.

[...] A lot of flexible electronics are built on polymer substrates rather than rigid materials like silicon. In addition to being flexible, most polymers are insulators—they don't conduct electricity or heat very well. And that turned out to be critical to boosting the efficiency of the phase-change memory.

The gist of the new device is that the phase-change hardware is surrounded by materials that don't conduct heat well. This helps trap the heat required to partially melt the device where it's needed, which means that you don't have to generate as much heat in the first place. And that in turn means that you need to put less power in to reset the device.

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

BBC: International Space Station: Smoke triggers alert on board

Alarms were triggered on board the International Space Station after the crew reported smoke and the smell of burning plastic.

The incident centred on the Russian-built Zvezda module which provides living quarters, Russian media report.

The ageing space station has suffered a number of failures over the years and a Russian official recently warned of outdated hardware and failing systems.

These include air leaks, misfiring engines and cracks.

Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, said later that all systems were back to normal.

Reuters: Smoke detected in Russian module on space station - Roscosmos

Roscosmos said a smoke detector and an alarm were set off on the Zvezda service module, which provides living quarters for crew members on the ISS, when batteries were being recharged overnight.

RIA, citing audio communications broadcast by the U.S. space agency NASA, reported that Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky had seen and smelled smoke and that French astronaut Thomas Pesquet said the smell of burnt plastic or electronics had spread from the Russian segment to the U.S. section.

You know the saying about where there's smoke, there's ... um ... something you might want to look into.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Ray-Ban Stories: These are Facebook's first mass-market smart glasses

As previously rumored, Facebook has partnered with EssilorLuxottica to produce Ray-Ban Stories, one of the first potentially viable attempts at mass-market smart glasses. They are similar in some ways to early iterations of Snapchat Spectacles but with a more stylish aesthetic that looks right in line with other Ray-Ban glasses.

The glasses have two front-facing cameras, each at 5 megapixels. Users can take a photo either with a touch gesture or with a "Hey Facebook" voice command. So people in the room can tell that pictures or video are being taken, a white LED on the front of the frames will light up. Videos can be as long as 30 seconds.

[...] The Ray-Ban Stories are equipped with a Snapdragon processor, but they don't have displays in the lenses. So these are by no means augmented reality (AR) glasses.

Also at Wccftech.

Related: Snapchat Takes a Second Shot at Wearable Camera "Spectacles"

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://lunduke.substack.com/p/the-best-vga-dos-games-period

Every major computing platform has, in terms of gaming, something special about it. The color palettes, the sound hardware, the storage mechanisms, the available keyboards and joysticks... they all lend flavor to the games developed for each system.

The sound of a Commodore 64. The funky colors of a ZX Spectrum. The pure black and white of the early Macintoshes. All wonderful in their own ways.

But DOS gaming... it might just be the most amazing of all. Especially the period of time from the early 1990s through to about the mid-1990s. VGA graphics. Sound Blaster audio. Lots and lots of 3.5" floppies (with the occasional CD-ROM).

And the games... Oh, my. So many games. Bajillions of them. While there were a lot of stinkers (counting them is as futile as counting the grains of sand on the beaches of the world), the great ones were truly spectacular.

Nay. Life changing.

What follows are what I consider to be the 10 best DOS games that capture that "VGA plus Sound Blaster" aesthetic. These are presented in chronological order... purely because ranking them any other way made my brain explode.

Original Submission

owl writes:

Paid influencers must label posts as ads, German court rules:

BERLIN, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Social media influencers who receive money from companies to promote products must clearly label such posts as advertisements, a top German court ruled on Thursday.

If the influencers are not paid, they can show products without the advertising label, the Federal Court of Justice ruled in the cases of three influencers on Facebook's (FB.O) social media site Instagram.

Influencers with thousands of followers can earn large fees from companies to promotes a product on Instagram.

Original Submission